Since the advent of the continuous casting of slabs, the steel industry has tried to successfully combine the hot strip mill and the continuous caster through an inline arrangement so as to maximize production capability and minimize the equipment and capital investment required. The efforts in this regard and shortcomings thereof are discussed in parent application Ser. No. 08/123,149 which is incorporated herein by reference.
Presently, in integrated thick slab mills, surface critical steels are taken off-line at the exit of the continuous caster to a surface conditioning area to improve and upgrade the metal surface. The slab is allowed to cool prior to surface conditioning which results in significant energy losses and changes in the slab metallurgy. This diversion also increases in-process inventory and handling costs.
It is an object of our invention to integrate an intermediate thickness slab caster with inline surface processing and a hot reversing mill which balances the rate of the caster with the rate of the rolling mill. It is also an object of our invention to adopt a system using less thermal and electrical energy and which minimizes or eliminates the need to take slabs off-line. It is still a further object to adopt an automated system with small capital investment, reasonable floor space requirements, reasonably powered rolling equipment and low operating costs.